Iran, Russia and North Korea have changed cyber attack tactics over the past year, Microsoft says

Microsoft users face more than 600 million cyberattacks every day, fueled in part by a growing trend of cybercrime gangs working with nation states, according to a new report from the company.

In this year’s Digital Security Report, Microsoft said that countries such as Russia, Iran and North Korea have changed the way they operate in the past year, including starting to experiment with AI.

“We need to find a way to stem the tide of this malicious cyber activity,” said Tom Burt, the company’s vice president of security and customer trust.

“This includes continuing to strengthen our digital domains to protect our networks, data and people at all levels.”

Russia appears to have “outsourced” some of its cyber espionage to criminal gangs, particularly around its spying in Ukraine, and in June a suspected cybercrime group managed to compromise at least 50 Ukrainian military devices.

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North Korea has developed a new piece of ransomware technology called FakePenny, which Microsoft says the country is using against defense and space organizations.

Iran has “put a big focus on Israel” and has been accused of hacking Israeli dating sites. Cybercriminals working for the country then allegedly offered to remove specific users from their hacked databases for a fee.

The number of ransomware attacks worldwide has more than doubled in the past year, according to the report, with hackers tending to use email, SMS and voice spoofing to try to gain access to users’ information.

The use of artificial intelligence in cyberattacks has also increased in the past year, with criminals linked to Russia and China using AI-generated content to try to trick users.

However, “so far we haven’t seen this content be effective in swaying audiences,” Mr. Burt said.